Harvey Charles: The Research University: Answering the Challenges of a Global Age

HARVEY CHARLES: I am delighted to be here, quite honored to have been invited by Vice Provost [INAUDIBLE] and Dr. Michelsen to attend this event and to share a few words with you. I am stunned at the number of you here this morning. On my campus, if you can get 15 people to show up to an event, it's a success. And this is a packed house.
And I would suspect that this is a reflection of the extent to which there is commitment to this really important agenda of internationalization on this campus. Now, part of me thinks that I'm preaching to the choir, but that's OK. It's a choir that's invested, that wishes to continue to move forward in this direction and to continue to strategize. I think that it is a huge challenge to do the work of comprehensive internationalization on campuses around the United States.
And as urgent and as much of an imperative as it is to do this work, it is still not necessarily the norm. It is still not work that is really institutionalized in American higher education. But I would also offer that it is especially a challenge to do this kind of work at Research I institutions, at elite institutions like this, because of the challenges around the silo culture.
And of course, this is work that really has to be done from an institutional perspective. And so I really take my hat off to the staff of the Center, the leadership of the Center in continuing to pursue this agenda and evidently being as successful as it continues to be. I hope that the remarks that I will share with you this morning will be useful or positive food for thought.
And I thought I would begin by talking about some of the major events that have affected or that have impacted the research university in the United States in its evolution over the past few decades. And I want to be clear that as much as I'm tempted to offer a history of the research university, that's really not my objective. My objective here is to show or to demonstrate that the research university has responded every time it has been confronted with challenges of one sort or another.
So we can trace this phenomenon to Johns Hopkins University and its founding in 1876. And it is widely understood to really be the first American institution that embraced a research model, so to speak-- a dramatic model, if you will, in terms of research and graduate study and a model that was actually very quickly adopted by existing institutions of that time and by institutions that soon followed after.
And one of the things that we need to keep in mind about the early days of the research university was that government funding was practically non-existent. These institutions really got most of their monies from alumni and from industrialists who established foundations, and that is how the research agenda was funded.
There is also another important characteristic, and that is the fact that the Cartesian view of research was adopted by these institutions. And what that means is that there was a sense that there was basic research decontextualized, a pursuit of ultimate truths, that kind of knowledge versus applied knowledge. And there was a ranking. Basic research was viewed as much more important than applied research and those two domains, for all intents and purposes, really should be kept apart, as it were. And so those were the early days of the research institution.
And then time progressed, and World War II arrived. And there were a number of academics who actually shared their expertise and supported the war effort. And at the end of the war, the federal government had a grand epiphany, so to speak.
The federal government realized that it could actually foster closer ties with the research university in order to ensure that there would be a cadre of scholars who could continue to lend their expertise to the federal government as it prepared for war, as it continued to expand in light of its new status as a superpower after the Second World War. And so this nexus that really did not exist prior to that time really came into being.
One of the other things that happened too, as you know, was that the GI Bill allowed thousands of returning veterans to go to college, to go to university. And so there was a large influx of new students, and as a result, an increasing demand for faculty to teach these students, and so again, the need for the research university to keep producing, generating faculty to meet this demand, and as a consequence, an expansion in research output as well. And here again, the research university responded to these realities and made the adjustments as it moved forward.
Another important event or two events was the Cold War on the one hand and then Sputnik. And here we found ourselves competing with this other great power, and we were determined come hell or high water to demonstrate that our system, in terms of how we organized our society and how we ran business in the United States, was superior. And much of this, actually, was manifested in terms of technological development.
And of course, when Sputnik happened and John Kennedy made that commitment to send a man to the moon and do all of these things, the realization was that research had to play a very central role as a result. In fact, if you look at the amount of funding that the US government gave to research universities at that time, it actually jumped from $40 million in 1958 to $240 million in 1964.
I mean, that's a lot of money. Even by today's standards, it's a lot of money. But back then, certainly, that was a significant commitment. And here again, the research university responded to these new circumstances and took advantage of this largesse in order to continue to do more research.
And then, of course, Vietnam happened and the civil rights movement, and those events were very significant developments in American society. New groups of students were beginning to enter the university-- many more women, many more students of color. But new groups of faculty were also entering the university.
New programs of study-- postmodernism actually arose during that time, and the significance of postmodernism was that it constituted a challenge to the Cartesian view of the hierarchy of knowledge. It is not insignificant that the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities were both founded in 1965.
So again, these developments occurred. The research university responded to these new developments in terms of incorporating new students, different kinds of students, different kinds of faculty. The Reagan presidency, believe it or not, was an important factor. And this was significant because of the marketing and ultimate adoption of the idea of limited government. And what this meant was less funding.
What it also meant-- not necessarily limited government, but another philosophy that arose at this particular time was that there should be market-driven principles and that research goals should be much more narrowly defined. And we actually began to see a shift from that Cartesian view of the primacy of basic research to more applied research.
So for example, we had the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as Star Wars. And there was a lot of money thrown after SDI, but not a whole lot of it actually made it into research universities. So here again, this very important political development, if you will, having implications for the research university.
The final thing I'd make mention to is the increased funding in the life sciences and engineering. And again, this phenomenon reflected that transition away from basic research to more applied research. In fact, at the end of the 20th century, medical schools were actually receiving more money in federal funding than practically all other areas of research combined-- quite a dramatic situation.
Now I could make reference to online education and the involvement of research universities in that, but that's really not the direction I want to go in. I want, however, to make as a final important development in research universities the phenomenon of globalization and the scramble for intellectual capital. And this indeed is truly a significant issue of our time and is affecting research universities and changing and transforming universities in fairly fundamental ways.
I think we all understand that the age of research is characterized principally by the interdependence and interconnectedness of nations. And it's manifested in a variety of spheres-- economic, political, social, cultural, knowledge spheres. It involves the mobility of goods, services, and people as well as ideas, even disease. And it is also characterized by the accelerated use of information, transportation, and communication technologies.
And the reality is that much of this is driven by research-- much of this is driven by research. And so I'm not going to say that research universities are responsible for globalization, but the work that research universities do goes a long way in helping to enable this amazing and unprecedented phenomenon that we are currently witnessing.
I should also say that the most important factor shaping the internationalization of higher education, the most important factor shaping research universities today in the early years of the 21st century, is also globalization. So we have to deal with globalization. It's inescapable. It's staring us in the face, and we have to engage with it in order to continue to be relevant.
Globalization is actually impacting research universities in a variety of ways. There is, for example, international student mobility. There are currently 4.3 million students who are studying in countries other than their own, for a variety of reasons. And I can deconstruct that, but we don't have time for that today.
But in 10 years, that number is expected to double. And so it's one of the characteristics of globalization relative to higher education research universities. And as you well know, a significant percentage of international students are at research university. Just look at the statistics in the United States.
There is also the phenomenon of the export of higher education. A lot of universities have gotten into the business of setting up campuses around the world. Some institutions actually used online platforms in order to deliver courses of study. If you look at Australia, higher education, particularly the hosting of international students, is actually the second or the third largest industry for the country-- quite significant.
Many institutions have become obsessed with international rankings. And there are some who think it's pointless. It's much ado about nothing. But I can tell you even some of the people who seem to take a dim view of rankings, in private, of course, they're very concerned about their standing because they understand that people around the world pay attention to rankings. And it has implications for your ability to attract the best and the brightest. It has implications for your ability to attract funding. So rankings matter.
There is a lot of cross-border-- an increasing amount of cross-border research and collaboration. And more importantly, what research is telling us is that the best science is actually produced by groups of people who come from different backgrounds, both ethnic backgrounds and geographical backgrounds. And so it is no surprise that we're seeing more and more of this. There are studies that will tell you that in terms of the number of citations, studies that are produced by diverse groups of people tend to have higher levels of citations than studies produced by more homogeneous groups of researchers.
And increasingly, we are seeing a much closer integration between ideas and the production of ideas and industry. And I think the connection would be fairly obvious to all of us in this room, so no need to address that.
But research universities are dealing with a number of challenges. And one of them I alluded to before, and that has to do with the fact that doing this work of internationalization in a siloed culture is really, really difficult. And I think in many respects, Cornell University is one among a handful-- and when I say a handful, I am talking about less than five-- of research universities in the United States that is doing this work in very intelligent ways and that actually can serve as a model to other research universities in the United States and even around the world.
Another real challenge is the ability to attract the best and the brightest students and faculty. And it is not that your student enrollments are hurting or you're struggling to get good faculty per se. The point is that there are a lot more competitors in the game.
I go to China at least four times a year, and I've been doing this for the past five, six years. And I can tell you that in 10 to 15 years, China will be a force to reckon with in the world of higher education. The Chinese government has made a commitment to spare nothing in pursuit of having world standards in terms of research, in terms of the quality of their universities. Practically every university I visit has an old campus and a new campus. And you go to the new campus, and it is this sprawling infrastructure.
And so my point is our lunches could be eaten. And because of that, we have to pay attention to remaining as competitive as we can. Leading a progressive research agenda can be a challenge if we're unable to secure the best and the brightest faculty.
Finding resources to fund our core mission-- and that may be, in some ways, a lot easier for a Cornell University as opposed to, say, a Northern Arizona University that is a public institution, that has to depend on the largesse of the state, where the sentiment in the legislature is let us starve the beast. We just lost $99 million, and my understanding was that at 2:00 in the morning when this decision was made in the legislature, some of the legislators were cheering. They were excited that they had succeeded in cutting $99 million from public higher education.
So I mean, these are real sentiments. This is reality in this great country we call the United States. And so this finding resources is a real challenge for research universities.
Maintaining high ethical standards-- a lot of scholars, a lot of researchers are under pressure to do really important work and to be the next star in their discipline. And some-- a few, maybe-- may believe that they have to cut corners in order to deliver, so to speak. And so this is something that the research university has to pay attention to.
Of course, providing the best academic preparation for our students cannot be forgotten. And sometimes I think things may get out of balance, where the focus is so much on research that maybe teaching might be ignored a little. I don't know.
But it is something that we have to be very intentional about because at the end of the day, this is part of our core mission, to prepare students, to prepare the next generation of scholars, to prepare the people who will lead Cornell University and lead our nation into the 22nd century, if you will. And of course, we can't forget our obligations to the local community and how easy it is to get caught up with the issues within the ivory tower and forget that we have an obligation to serve those in the community as well.
So why does internationalization matter? Why do this work? Why invest all of these resources? Why spend our precious time on a Wednesday morning gathered in a forum like this? Why does it really matter?
Well, for one, I think that the greatest challenges facing humanity right now are global in nature. We look at climate change, for example-- just one among many examples. And the reality is that the solutions for these global problems require the expertise of scholars at research universities. So the research universities have a prominent role to play in addressing and helping to provide solutions to humanity's greatest problems, problems, which as I said before, are global in nature.
Internationalization matters because it is one way by which we will continue to fulfill the core mission of the research university. And we simply can't do that by using strategies and practices of 40, 50 years ago. Internationalization matters in order to remain competitive.
Now, my assessment as an international educator is that most research universities understand that they have to move in this direction. But there is a lot of-- how should I say? There is an absence of clarity.
My sense is that a lot of presidents and provosts talk about, yeah, we have to take care of this international stuff. Stuff, OK? In terms of the people identified to provide leadership, I see it all the time.
There is a real misunderstanding about who needs to do this work, how this work ought to be done, the important elements associated with doing internationalization. And clearly, some get it a lot better than others. Certainly, Cornell gets it a lot better than others.
But my point is that the work of campus internationalization is relatively new in the whole scheme of things. We are talking about a history that's less than 40 years old. And people are still trying to figure out what this all means. But the sooner we understand what it means, the more successful we can be in being competitive and ensuring that we stay at the cutting edge.
Internationalization matters because this is one of the ways by which we can actually work to improve the human condition and to prepare the next generation of students and scholars. But the curriculum has to be a central focus if we go down the path of internationalization. And I'm talking about the curriculum conceived in very broad terms, because whenever we talk internationalization, invariably, a university administrator would start making references to study abroad. Oh, we send 40% of our students on study abroad. Or, we have 3,000 international students.
And it's a pet peeve of mine because internationalization is not study abroad. Study abroad is one element-- just one element. And in fact, it's one element of student mobility, which is one element of comprehensive internationalization.
So we have to conceive of our work in internationalization in very broad terms in such a way that it touches all of our students. If you look at the participation rates of study abroad among American students, we're talking about less than 12%. And I'm being very generous here, OK?
And so if such small numbers are participating in study abroad, and we define international education in terms of study abroad, it then means that this stuff is not reaching the bulk of students. And we have to ensure that whatever we do in terms of designing a curriculum that is internationalized can touch all students. We wanted to touch all students in a way so that they all have multiple substantive and intentional encounters with global perspectives. So it needs to happen in multiple sites-- in the general education curriculum, in the disciplines, in the core curriculum.
At the end of the day, the objective is to prepare students who are globally competent. That's really what we're aiming for. And so how do we engage with this globalized curriculum? Well, it's important to think of an orientation to internationalization in terms of the general education curriculum.
You may have heard about the huge fight, the brouhaha at UCLA recently over the decision to adopt one course around diversity. And it's been a fight going on for years. And somehow this one course is supposed to teach students everything they need to know. It's ridiculous.
And yet, you would be amazed to see the number of institutions that have this model. You must do this one course to meet your global requirement. It's the silver bullet approach, of course, and it doesn't work. And maybe it has never worked.
And so in the general education curriculum, there needs to be an orientation to internationalization, where students are, within that context, having multiple encounters-- deep and meaningful encounters and intentional encounters-- with global perspectives. And the same applies to disciplines.
My view is that no graduate should leave the halls of Cornell University without understanding his or her own discipline in global terms because they're entering a society that is globalized, and they will need those perspectives and those skills to succeed within those respective disciplines.
And trust me. It doesn't matter what discipline we're talking about. There are some people who like to say, oh, you can't internationalize math. Not true. Oh, you can't internationalize physics. Not true. It can be done, and it has to be done. And that's a challenge facing us today.
We have to find smart and effective ways of integrating education abroad into the curriculum. It can no longer be, oh, I would like to spend a semester in Paris. My dad has always talked about what a great time he had, and I would like to go spend a semester. Or, my boyfriend is going to Australia, so I'm going with him.
And I think way too often study abroad is not conceived-- in fact, it is not even viewed as part of the curriculum. I think on many campuses it's defined as almost extracurricular activity, and it isn't. At its very core is learning.
And I like to talk about education abroad as opposed to study abroad because you can do a number of interesting things in education abroad that does not involve being in a traditional classroom. You can be involved in internships abroad, in research abroad, in service learning abroad. And all of those are meaningful learning experiences that can actually help in student transformation.
We need to talk in terms of global learning outcomes. We need to be sure about what we want students to achieve as a result of these experiences. And we need to keep ourselves accountable by actually articulating global learning outcomes. And I think you'd hear more about that later on in the day.
But this is yet another one of those things that we need to do when we reckon with a globalized curriculum. So identifying, for example, the capstone course in a discipline and the gateway course-- these are really smart places to ensure that students have meaningful encounters with global perspectives.
And then there is the assessment of global learning. It is one thing to articulate global learning outcomes. But again, to keep ourselves accountable, we have to be willing to engage in honest assessment.
Faculty members are the principal agents of a globalized curriculum. And so it is foolish to talk about doing this work without paying attention to the kind of support that we must provide to them to secure appropriate international and research opportunities. And it doesn't always mean that the university has to provide tons of money to the faculty. It doesn't always mean that.
I run a workshop on Fulbrights, and I've been doing that since I arrived at Northern Arizona University. And we actually saw not only a spike in the number of faculty applying for Fulbrights, but the number of faculty receiving Fulbright grants just by doing a workshop, talking to faculty about the fact that this amazing prestigious opportunity exists. It is so easy to get one. One in three Fulbright applications are funded.
It's so easy. Take advantage of it. Take a break from Flagstaff, if you will, at somebody else's dime. Great idea. But this is work that needs to be done because if we are expecting faculty to provide students with the kinds of experiences and ideas that are global in nature, they themselves have to have the requisite experience abroad.
So I thought I would share with you just a few examples of curricula models of internationalization that actually show the integration between international experiences and the curriculum. And these are all examples of things that happened on my campus. And you may very well have similar examples here as well. But I'll just quickly go through these examples.
The first is a co-taught, co-located, real-time instruction. And so we have two examples. A faculty in our electronic media and film program teaches a course in cinema with a colleague at the University of Wollongong in Australia. And it is a course that is taught in real-time.
So students on both campuses are effectively sharing the same classroom. They use videoconferencing technology of some sort to pull it off. And they've been doing it for a number of years, and it has been quite successful.
Students are able to effectively look at the same course material, but of course, they're bringing their own perspectives in the process. And our students in Flagstaff have the opportunity to learn from their counterparts in Australia and vice versa. And it's a relatively simple strategy to implement because you certainly have the technological resources here to pull that off. We are currently planning to do something similar involving indigenous identity.
Then there is the global certificate program. And a number of institutions have this model. Kennesaw State University, I think, has a very well-developed model, but I know it exists on other campuses.
And what you do is you basically make the certificate available to any student. So it doesn't matter what discipline you belong to. And what you do is you combine or you require global coursework. You require an education abroad experience. You require cross-cultural experiences.
And once you have fulfilled these experiences, you're entitled to receive a global certificate. And the point of the exercise is not the certificate. The point of the exercise are the experiences that students gain in the process.
This model, the Global Science and Engineering Program, is something about which I am very proud. We launched this program on our campus about five years ago. The model itself is not new.
The model, I think, was first pioneered by the University of Rhode Island. They have an international engineering program. It was founded about 28 years ago. It received FIPSE funds to get it off the ground. And when I was the SIO at Georgia Tech, I attended the colloquium that they have every November, learned about this, and was just fascinated by it.
And so the idea is that students-- this program is open to STEM majors, but of course, the model can apply to any discipline, in fact. Last year, we started a similar model for business students. But it's effectively a five-year program where students earn two degrees, one in the STEM discipline and one in a language.
And I think this is particularly salient as we live in a time when there is less and less and less support for languages in higher education. Language programs are being cut. Students are no longer being required to take languages. So it's gradually moving to the periphery even at the same time that we are becoming a more globalized world, where cultures are interacting a lot more frequently and there is a need for us to have a better understanding of people in cross-cultural situations.
And so over five years, students work on the requirements for two degrees, one in the STEM discipline and one in a language. In the fourth year, they spend the entire year overseas. Half of the year, they study, and the other half, they do an internship. They earn credit for the internship activity and the study, of course. And it's all part of meeting the requirements for graduation in these three areas.
We have 200 students enrolled in this program, and it's essentially a pathway program. So this is what it looks like. We have engineering disciplines, natural science disciplines. And by the way, we have representation from every single STEM discipline in this global science and engineering program.
Over the past month, I have been conducting focus groups, basically trying to understand why students have chosen to enroll in this program. And many of them say to us, well, I knew coming in that I wanted to pursue a STEM discipline, but I also wanted to study abroad. And I also wanted to have an internship experience. And this program has packaged everything together.
And that is exactly what it has done. It is very intense because in order to complete in five years, you have to take 18, 19 credits per semester. But the students in this program are highly motivated. They're ambitious.
We do not refer to this program as an elite program because we don't think that it necessarily requires special students. You've got to be committed. You've got to be focused. You've got to be motivated. You've got to be willing to work hard. And if that's true of you, then you can do it.
We have another graphic here showing the progression plan for these students. And I'll certainly share this PowerPoint with you so if you'd like to look at it in greater detail, you'd get a chance to see it. So this is yet again one example of how international experiences can effectively be integrated in the curriculum to produce amazing outcomes.
The faculty-led study abroad program-- I know they exist on this campus, and I'm sure that the Center would like to see more faculty coming forward saying, I'd like to lead a faculty-led program. It's essentially an extension of the classroom overseas. And it affords students learning opportunities that are not possible here in Ithaca. It's an amazing opportunity.
For us on my campus, it has to be a credit-bearing experience, and it has to be under the direction of faculty. In some instances, research is emphasized as opposed to just instruction. And it affords students an up-close and personal examination of the phenomenon that they're looking at.
I think this is my final example, the idea of dual degrees. And by the way, this can happen at any level. You can do dual degrees at the undergraduate level, at the master's level, at the doctoral level.
And essentially what it does is that it allows both students and faculty to exploit the strengths of two institutions. But it also facilitates in the process cultural immersion as part of the experience. And effectively, students are able to earn two degrees in the same time that it would take to earn one degree.
For example, we have a dual degree program at the master's level with the University of Botswana. They do not have a master's degree in sociology. We do not have a master's degree in development studies. But both disciplines are sufficiently close that students can complete the requirements or complete coursework in one discipline on the home campus and then go to the other campus and complete the requirements for the other discipline in that second year, do a thesis, and at the end of two, two and a half years, have two degrees. An amazing learning opportunity for graduate students.
So what sort of future can we envision for the research university within a globalized context? Well, first of all, it has to be a future where global engagement is deeply embedded in the mission of that university and actually has to be articulated in the mission, and in the vision, and in the strategic goals of the institution.
Such a future would include having a strong infrastructure for campus internationalization. And the infrastructure that you have here at Cornell is certainly the envy of-- well, I am envious. Let me put it that way.
[LAUGHTER]
I think part of this future would also include the use of technology, but the use of technology in a prudent and a responsible way. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everything new that comes in the market we necessarily have to embrace. And if you think that I am referring to MOOCs, maybe I am.
[LAUGHS]
But technology has to be part of the formulation not because technology is an end in itself, but because technology might indeed enable us to do things more efficiently, more effectively that we might not have been able to do without it.
There has to be faculty support for global engagement. We have to remain committed to internationalizing the curriculum-- all curriculum. We have to continue to pay attention and not necessarily take for granted student mobility that supports internationalization. And finally, the future of the research university is one that will involve having meaningful and productive partnerships and collaborations with institutions around the world. Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]

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Keynote speaker Harvey Charles, Vice Provost for International Initiatives and Professor of Educational Psychology at Northern Arizona University, discusses unique challenges faced by research institutions on their path to internationalization. The presentation was part of the Internationalization Symposium, "Integration of International Experience into the Curriculum" on May 13, 2015 organized by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies in collaboration with Cornell Abroad, the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Center for Engaged Learning + Research, and the Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives (OADI).